Creating Pages for Every Keyword Variation

The world of digital marketing is constantly changing, especially when it comes to search engine optimization or SEO. SEO is one of those cornerstone practices for digital marketers that make the difference between a good online presence and a great one.

Because SEO changes what seems like almost daily, the most effective SEO practices are always changing and evolving. These changes mean that SEO practices are continuously becoming outdated as we learn more about the internet and search engines change their search algorithms.

In order to make sure that your website stays on top and current with SEO, there are a few SEO practices that you should permanently retire if you are still practicing them. To help you out, here are 4 of the top outdated SEO practices that you need to stop doing now.

Focusing on Keywords and Not Clicks

 This may sound totally counterproductive to SEO, but you have to stop focusing on keyword density instead of clicks. Having all the keywords on your webpage or in your articles may seem like the best way to get a higher ranking on search engines, but if they aren’t drawing clicks, the keywords don’t matter.

Having the right raw keywords is still important for SEO, but it’s not more important than getting the click. If you want to rank higher, your webpage and articles need to have the proper balance between keywords and clickability.

Take the time to write and create engaging and interesting content that will draw the click and work the keywords in as you do that. It is important to note that we are not condoning clickbait titles and descriptions, but you should take a hard look at what is drawing the clicks and how to apply that strategy to all your pages and articles.

Too Much Anchor Text on Internal Links

It use to be that heavy anchor text on internal links would improve your SEO value. This is no longer the case. Search engines are now taking into account pages and articles that are inappropriately using anchor text to manipulate their SEO ranking.

Make sure that you are using anchor text appropriately. If the internal link is in the header, footer, site navigation, or sidebar, add appropriate anchor text. If you are using it simply to manipulate search engines and it has no other value, get rid of it to ensure that you penalized by search engines for bad anchor text use.

Creating Pages for Every Keyword Variation

 Creating new pages for each variation of a keyword is still a very widely used tactic with SEO specialists and digital marketers. This use to be a highly effective tactic to ensure that search engines would rank your page for a keyword regardless of which keyword variation a person searching used.

Google has since gotten savvier about this tactic. It is now suggested that keyword variations are sprinkled into a single page in an appropriate manner instead of having multiple pages for each keyword variation. This signals to search engines that your content is designed to be helpful and useful instead of just to manipulate SEO rankings.

Paying for Links

 When companies started to realize the SEO value in link building, companies started to appear that offered to sell links in large directories to help boost SEO value. This worked for a while. Search engines tracked these links as link building activities that signaled that the website being linked to was an authority and this boosted their SEO value.

Google and other search engines have since realized that companies were paying for these links to just boost SEO value and started pushing websites that were using them by downgrading their SEO rank. They recognized that these directories were not a credible source and wanted to discourage the link building manipulation.

As a general rule of thumb, it is advisable for companies to not pay for any links unless it is part of a legitimate partnership. For example, paying a blogger to write about a service of yours that they use and then have them link to your site is okay and helps boost your SEO value, but paying a random site directory to list your link is bad.

If you are interested in learning more about outdated SEO practices and how to make sure that you aren’t using them, check out my website and my done-for-you system to improve your digital marketing.

Posting Your Blog Content on Facebook

Having a corporate blog is an important digital marketing strategy. It helps with SEO, gives your customers and clients important information, helps educate new customers and clients, and is a great platform to talk about what you do and how you do it.

Undoubtedly you spend a fair amount of time curating the content for your blog. You come up with ideas, write the content, optimize it for your website, and more. After it’s written, you want to make sure that people actually read it.

One of the best ways to get your blog content out there is to post it on your social media channels. Facebook is an especially powerful tool for posting your blog content and having people read and share it.

There are a few tactics that you can use to your advantage when you post your blog content on Facebook. Here are the ones that work the best:

Share your blog on Facebook

 First thing is first, you should share your blog on your corporate Facebook account fairly soon after publishing it on your website. This ensures that the content is timely and lets people know that you published a new blog.

As an added bonus, sharing your blog on Facebook is totally free and it has the potential to spread far and wide. Encourage people to share it. Share it with your friends and business associates. The more eyes that see your blog post on Facebook, the better.

Boost the blog post on Facebook

 Using Facebook’s boosting options is a great way to get your blog content to the right people. When you boost a post, you choose who it goes to and can see how many people it can reach with a certain budget.

You can choose to pay per click, per 1000 impressions, or per engagement. This allows you to customize your boosted blog post to garner the action you want from your readers. Boosted posts can not only help ensure that your current customers and clients see your new blog content, they can also help new people see your blog and learn about what you do.

Use great headlines

 When you post a blog on Facebook, the headline is one of the first things people see. In fact, almost 80% of people never even make it past the headline. Because of this, you want a powerful headline that encourages people to click into and read the whole blog post.

Keep the headlines short and to the point. Tell readers exactly what they should expect to get out of the blog. If there are any important or eye-catching numbers or facts, those can be great to incorporate into the headline.

Imaging matters

 When you publish a blog post on Facebook, it is important to add an eye-catching image to make the link stand out in the newsfeed. Stock images are okay, but images that you take or create are better.

Whatever you choose to use, make sure all the images are high-contrast and colorful. That helps them pop in the hectic and crowded space of someone’s Facebook newsfeed.

Write top-notch copy

 While there are some tricks and tactics that can help your blog get attention on Facebook, nothing can beat solid copy. You can have the best headline and imaging and people still may not click on your blog post due to weak or uninspiring Facebook ad or post copy.

Those 140 or so characters that you write to describe the blog post in the Facebook post or Facebook ad are vitally important to getting people to read your blog. Make the copy stand out.

Use testimonials, ask questions, give a solution to common problems, use a clear call to action, appeal to people’s emotions. You need to capture people’s attention with your copy to get them to read your blog.

Facebook can be a powerful tool in promoting your blog content if you want to learn more about how to make it work for you, check out my done-for-you system.